‘The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes’ Review: The Rare Tabloid Exposé That Sets the Record Straight
Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticThe word “tabloid” has a sleazy mystique. It’s such a potent word that it can influence the way you think about the subjects that fall into that category. “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes” is a documentary that dives into what we think of as the most tawdry and sensational aspects of the Marilyn Monroe story: her death, on August 4, 1962, from an overdose of barbiturates; the hideous downward spiral of depression and narcotics that led up to it; and, buried deep in the weeds of all of that, the most scandalous piece of gossip ever connected to Marilyn Monroe — her clandestine affairs with John F.
Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy.This is dark, squalid, squinting-through-the-keyhole stuff, and it can make a film like “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe” sound like a guilty-pleasure piece of true-crime trash, one of those glorified tabloid-TV exposés with a patina of investigative credibility.
In fact, it’s a very good film. What’s more, there’s no reason, at this point, to go on pretending that what happened to Marilyn Monroe is some “sordid” pulp saga we have to peek at through our fingers from on high.
In truth, every aspect of her life was connected to every other: her role as the greatest sex symbol of the 20th century; the melting radiance and magic she exuded onscreen, which were inseparable from her gifts as an actress; the desolate childhood that left her feeling, for most of her adult life, lonely and abused and abandoned; the parade of powerful and famous men she was involved with; and where all of that led — to a downfall that, in its tragedy, had as much meaning as her life did, which is one of the reasons its most explosive aspects were considered too dangerous for.
